The Apple Core Project

Reminder! Please join us for some heirloom apple grafting at Flying Bear this Friday, 4-6pm! Heirloom varieties to choose from our scion collection: Snow, York Imperial, Winter Banana, Chenango Strawberry, Arkansas Black, Jonathon, Rhode Island Greening, Old Time Delicious, Hawkeye, Summer Harvest, Transcendent Crab, Duchess of Oldenberg, Rambo, Gano, Golden Delicious, King of the Pippins, Wagener, Grimes Golden, Stayman, Gravenstein, Twenty Ounce, Wolf River, King David. Txt me at 970-708-3972 to sign up! $10 per tree you graft to take home to nurse.

I wanted to share this beautifully written piece that our friends over at MORP shared from Pendragon Orchard and Vine:
Turning Landscape into Legacy. We have so many people ask about pruning their old apple trees, and the advice given in this piece is an absolute must read. Here are a few excerpts to entice you to take the time to read such a meaningful piece....
"Standing there among those trees, it was obvious this wasn’t going to be a “normal” pruning plan. There would be no opening of centers, no height reduction, no seasonal productivity targets. These trees are not problems to be corrected. They are elders—veterans of storms, salt winds, neglect, and care applied unevenly over generations."

"And sometimes, the philosophy demands something harder still: acceptance. Some trees will never stand again. Some will fruit lightly, irregularly, or not at all. Some are already in a long, graceful descent. That does not make them failures. They still hold soil. Still host life. Still carry genetics that no nursery can sell you. Still teach the land how to remember itself."

You Don’t Prune Heritage Trees. You Keep Them Company. Heritage trees don’t respond to correction. They respond to restraint. Their energy is no longer spent on expansion but on maintenance—holding together what time and weather have already negotiated. When you prune them as if they were young, you don’t restore vigor. You trigger panic growth, b...